Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Sep 05, 2012

the quixotic ideal of reality-hacking, and fears (disguised as waiting) in the creative process

Fear and the creative process is and isn't spoken about much. Here's a snippet from a e-letter I wrote a musically-inclined friend today. What the heck, I'll publish it.

oh, it's john cage's 100th birthday today (um if he were alive i suppose or wherever he is in time-space)

julie lazar spoke at SFMoMa yesterday with tons of slides since she and Cage collaborated on a visual composition (rolywholyover circus) that traveled to five museums

anyhow, julie said she moved to NYC when she was 17 to become a dancer. she worked in ticket booth at lincoln center for day job and happened to get some tickets to see a john cage performance

she said, "I didn't like what I saw or heard but i decided then and there to dedicate my life to artists that help us [didn't catch precisely how she worded it: shattered our illusions? expanded our vision? etc]... My idea of what life was was blown open."

isn't that amazing?!
she didn't like it, but it didn't matter--it was how it jolted her out of her expectations that mattered

i often WORRY (needlessly) that i will be judged, shunned, exiled, crucified or something worse for doing precisely that--jostling/shattering people's expectations [rather than bending over backwards meeting expectations].... and yet that's why it moved her...

- e

What I'm deeply interested in can be deemed quixotic, as in Don Quixote--who tended to be scorned and mocked for his chivalry. (If you doubt this, look up dictionary definitions for quixotic, such as: "foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals.") However, I did read a paragraph recently that called to me: "Don Quixote holds a good-hearted vision of the world as a noble place, and so strong is this vision that by the end of the novel, it has in some mysterious way transformed his material surroundings." Exactly.

Brian Clark in an interview with Andrea Phillips says, ""Artistically, I like to believe that we have the opportunity to create a sense of wonder about the world around us, to wake people up from the plodding through life with a little moment that can start to open the doors of perception and unlock a sense of power to remake the world the way you want it to be. For at least the last decade, much of my work at least incorporates elements of this ideal of "reality hacking".... "

I recently reading a moving part (the rest of the book isn't as personal albeit it's great too and I highly recommend it if you're interested in the subject, yet the personal story is why I resonated with this section) in A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling by Andrea Phillips about how she found herself suddenly unemployed in December 2007.

"And as much as I was desperate to do paying work, I was equally hungry to do fulfilling work. Perplex City had been three years of incredible creative collaboration with an exceptional team, and it was gone, gone, gone. I was lonely and unproductive. I was terrified that my career as a creator had ground to a halt and would never move forward again. I was waiting for a break. Waiting for an offer. Waiting for someone to notice me and tell me what to do next. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

And then I started talking to my old friend and fellow Cloudmaker Jay Bushman. He had recently launched a Twitter adaptation of a Herman Melville story called The Good Captain. Every day for three months, The Good Captain spun out a few short sentences of the tale of a drifting spaceship and the robot mutiny that had led to the ship's dire situation.

I found myself profoundly jealous of Bushman's ability to create and promote something so interesting when it wasn't his job and he had no funding. What did he have that I didn't?

The answer, of course, was nothing at all. Nothing but the sheer drive to create, that is.

This ignited the spark in me that had been missing: the passion to just make something with whatever resources I had on hand. Since I was so dead broke, those resources amounted to my brain, my fingers to type with, the computer I already owned, and the Internet connection I was already paying for.

[Andrea explains some projects she created using free resources like Twitter, Google Calendar (for time travel, of course) and a Wiki fiction experiment.]

. . . A curious correlation arose. the more indie stuff I made, the more paying work I got, too, and on an amazing array of projects. Why? There are a lot of people who talk about transmedia. It turns out that there are precious few who are actually tring to make something with what they have right now.

. . . And it's nothing special about me: you can do it, too. Just prove that you have the ambition to create, no matter what your situation. That puts you at a decided advantage.

So my biggest, most important lesson is this: you can't wait for permission or funding or a contract or a job. Once you get this--and I mean really, really get this--you and your career will be transformed. You will be liberated. Don't hang around hoping that somebody specifically asks you to make something. Find something to get excited about, and then, as the Nike ads go, Just Do It." - Andrea Phillips, A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling

I too find fear disguises itself as "waiting for not right now" as somehow some other point might be the right time, right opportunity, right job, right place, right teammates, right funding, right attitude--yada yada. I recall opening a book this past spring where an interviewer asked Bob Dylan for the secret to his success. He replied, "I was doing what I could with what I had where I was."

Comments

Thank you for another wonderful kindred-spirit post, Evelyn. From what you share, our journeys have been parallel, so I appreciate your musings and experiments (and the spirit of experimentation).

I enjoyed the bits from Andrea's story as well, yet want to add one thing: Sometimes essential 'doing' is disguised as 'waiting ... when we're listening, experimenting, observing and ultimately finding those things that motivate and inspire us so that we can dive into the creative experiment as this post suggests.

Hmmmm, perhaps this even turns 'the waiting' itself into a creative, dynamic experiment.

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